[Illustration] The name is local, from Bendish, in the parish of
Radwinter, in Essex, where Peter Westley was seated at a very early
period. His grandson was called Ralf of Westley, alias Bendishe, and
from him this ancient family, one branch of which was long settled
at Steeple Bumstead, in Essex, is descended. A manor in Barrington
came from the heiress of Bradfield early in the fifteenth century,
and had acquired the name of "The Manor of Bendyshe" so far back as
the year 1493; it has ever since remained the inheritance of this
the eldest line of the Bendyshe family, of whom a younger branch was
of Topfield Hall, in Hadley, co. Suffolk, whose heiress married
Doyley of Overbury, also of Steeple Bumstead before mentioned,
created Baronet in 1611, extinct in 1717; and other branches again
were of Hadley and Turvey in Bedfordshire.
See Lysons's Cambridgeshire, p. 86, and the Visitation of Essex
1612, Harl. MS. 6095, fol. 16, where is a good pedigree of Bendyshe,
brought down to William Bendyshe, Esq. tenth in descent from Peter
Westley.
ARMS.--_Argent, a chevron sable between three ram's heads erased
azure_.
Present Representative, John Bendyshe, Esq.